About the author

Excited by adventuring, discovering and exploring everything. If like me, you’re curious and excited about new trends finding their way to Amsterdam- then read on.

In today’s technologically advanced, high-paced lifestyle, many of life’s mysteries have ceased to captivate us. The answers have been found and we live in digital clarity. All of the smoke and mirrors can be rendered into a binary, explainable format. Boring! How can we suspend enchantment?

Mystery experience

“It’s our mission is to re-enchant the world”, says Sherlocked co-founder Victor van Doorn. “The age of science and reason has given us tremendous benefits, but also taken away something essential- the magic in mystery. We’re here to play a part in bringing that back”.

We need to re-discover the playfulness inside us, rather than having fingers and eyes glued to a screen gaming, or watching series on an iPad. What if we embarked on a real-life game? Queue explanation of a trend that is rapidly gaining momentum since its conception – though exactly who and where created the escape room we know today is debated. Was it the group of programmers in Silicon Valley who, in 2006, created Origin, an escape room based on Agatha Christies mysteries? Or was it Takao Kato’s Real Escape Room created in Kyoto in 2008? Or perhaps the complex ‘mystery experience’ format we recognize today hailed from Budapest in 2011? It’s a mystery.

Playing Sherlock

For us the origin is perhaps less significant than the fact that there are multiple escape room adventures at our fingertips, right here in the city! Through the likes of Sherlocked, vouched as the number one escape room, we can immerse ourselves in mysterious adventures that ignite the detective in all of us. I can tell you from experience, that it lingers well after time locked in the belly of the Beurs van Berlage building (where Sherlocked resides) and gives a little mysterious sparkly attitude to life afterward.

The Overdose team tried our hands at a never before experienced take on the escape room: a break in. The Vault, newly launched, is the latest mystery adventure by the guys of Sherlocked. Posing as ‘highly skilled thieves’, we executed a heist into the most secure safe in Amsterdam, or at least attempted to…

I loved the attention to detail, a real life video game. There were lots of kinds of puzzles – suited to all kinds of brains. The game was only solvable as a united team though.

As clues are solved, the complex story begins to unravel which leads to the unearthing and solving of more puzzles. You find yourself in another reality – becoming Sherlock himself, or Ocean’s Eleven. The complex web in which the story is suspended becomes more captivating the deeper you adventure into the historical vaults. Beware of the clock though – time is of the essence. Pick your team wisely too; play to individual strengths or fail together.

“The game is solvable, but the puzzles are tough and varied, and the story is complex and rich – not everyone solves it. It’s a shame we didn’t make it to the lasers, or finished the heist… shall we do it again?” said one of our team members, another agreed, adding, “It was such a unique evening, a really cool way of storytelling. Using factual stuff about real historical families and Hendrik Berlage (architect of the Beurs van Berlage)- and the building itself, it’s a forgotten labyrinth in there! – adding all these layers and histories and mysteries. And we were in that story for the night.”

For those of you in need of re-enchanting your world, escaping (or breaking in) is the key.